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Thirty-two years turning wrenches at a Chevy dealership in Dayton, Ohio taught me something: if you do the job right the first time, you don't have to do it again. Same principle applies to cooking in an RV. Spend three hours on Sunday, eat well all week. No wasted motion. No repeated effort. Just execution.

I approach batch cooking the same way I used to approach a transmission rebuild. Lay out your parts. Follow the procedure. Don't skip steps.

The Sunday Procedure

Step 1: Protein prep (45 minutes). I cook two proteins every Sunday. Usually that's 3 pounds of chicken thighs (bone-in, skin-on, seasoned with just salt, pepper, and garlic powder, roasted at 425 for 40 minutes) and 2 pounds of ground beef (browned in my Lodge 12-inch skillet with onions and drained). The chicken gets shredded once it cools. Both go into separate Pyrex containers in the fridge.

Why these two? Because they're versatile. Shredded chicken goes into tacos, wraps, soup, salads, pasta, rice bowls. Browned ground beef goes into chili, spaghetti sauce, stuffed peppers, nachos. Two proteins, unlimited combinations. That's efficiency.

Step 2: Grain prep (20 minutes). I make a big batch of rice in my Instant Pot -- 3 cups dry, which yields about 6 cups cooked. Sometimes I do a pot of quinoa instead if my wife Diane is on one of her health kicks. Rice keeps 5 days in the fridge no problem. I portion it into 1-cup servings in small containers so I can just grab one and reheat.

Step 3: Vegetable prep (30 minutes). I wash and chop whatever vegetables we bought. Bell peppers get diced. Broccoli gets cut into florets. Onions get sliced. Carrots get peeled and sliced. Everything goes into containers lined with paper towels to absorb moisture. Pre-chopped vegetables cut weeknight cooking time in half because the prep is always the slowest part of any job.

Step 4: Sauce prep (15 minutes). I make one or two sauces. My standard rotation is a simple marinara (canned San Marzano tomatoes, garlic, basil, olive oil, simmered 15 minutes) and a stir-fry sauce (soy sauce, sesame oil, rice vinegar, garlic, ginger, cornstarch slurry). Having sauces ready means I can turn protein + grain + vegetables into a completely different meal just by changing the sauce. Same parts, different assembly. Like swapping out a body on the same chassis.

The Weekly Schedule

Monday: Chicken stir-fry with rice and whatever vegetables. Use the stir-fry sauce. Cook time: 12 minutes.

Tuesday: Ground beef tacos. Reheat the beef with taco seasoning, set out tortillas, cheese, lettuce, salsa. Cook time: 8 minutes.

Wednesday: Chicken pasta with marinara. Boil pasta (the one thing I make fresh), toss with shredded chicken and sauce. Cook time: 15 minutes.

Thursday: Rice bowls. Rice, ground beef, black beans (from a can), cheese, sour cream, salsa. Cook time: 5 minutes to reheat.

Friday: We usually eat out or do something simple. Burgers on the grill, or sandwiches. After four days of eating from the batch, a break feels earned.

Saturday: Leftovers, soup from whatever's still in the fridge, or we'll cook something special together if we feel like it.

Lessons Learned

Label everything with masking tape and a Sharpie. Date and contents. I learned this in the shop -- every part gets labeled or things get mixed up. Same principle. Diane found a container of something in the back of the fridge once that neither of us could identify. That was a bad day.

Get an Instant Pot. I resisted for years because it seemed gimmicky. I was wrong. It does rice perfectly, makes beans from dry in 40 minutes, and I've even done pulled pork in it. Ours is the 6-quart model and it fits fine in the RV kitchen cabinet.

This system costs us about $80-90 per week in groceries for two people. That includes everything. We used to spend $40-50 per day when we were eating out and buying convenience food. Do the math on that and you'll see why batch cooking isn't just smart, it's necessary.